


How the Captain Fixed His Watch

by Hokuto



Category: Pan's Labyrinth (movie)
Genre: Character Study, Dark, Disturbing, Gen, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Tragedy, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 18:08:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scenes from the life of a Fascist army captain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How the Captain Fixed His Watch

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I know I'm going to hell for this. I just think his character is interesting and the whole watch thing fascinates me! There is not actually that much overt violence, but I thought the warning ought to be up there just in case.

Vidal had never been good at fixing things, only at breaking them. He wished he weren't, sometimes, but there was nothing he could do about it; he was careful as he could be, but once he had knocked over Mother's only beloved vase or cracked the glass of the ancient family clock he couldn't put any of them back together again. His father beat him for it each time, which Vidal supposed was fair; you shouldn't break what you can't fix, and there was nothing to spare for replacements.

It was a mystery to him and to adults alike. He was short for his age, not one of those children whose size outraces their coordination, and he had a sudden grace more natural to a young bull than to a boy. Perhaps it was the bull in him that moved him without care to his surroundings, to send vases and little figures to the shattering floor; but it was not solely fear of his father's belt that moved him, each time, to gather the pieces together and try to fit them back into one.

* * *

  
When he was ten his best friends were Roman and Ignacio, and they ran around together wherever they wanted to go, except for the places they weren't allowed, made the more alluring by the forbidding.

They dared him to go into the old Moorish mosque just outside of town, abandoned before they were born; he braved the cracked arches and half-fallen roof, and returned to them with a trophy: a chunk of stone, only a little crumbly at the edges, and inlaid with dark Arabic letters.

"Oh you'd better put that back," Ignacio said, wide-eyed, "that's stealing, and from a _church_..."

"It isn't stealing," Vidal said, "no one wants it."

"It's stealing, I'm going to tell my mother," said Ignacio, and he turned away.

Vidal touched Ignacio's shoulder, and when the other boy turned back he hit him in the nose with the rock.

Ignacio staggered backwards, putting his hands to his face. "What -" he said, and then Vidal shoved him to the ground and sat on his fat little chest and hit him again, the mouth first, the nose again, hard on each ear, the mouth, the bloody mouth, the -

Roman grabbed his arm and yanked him away, yelling, but Vidal couldn't hear the words; his head was too cold, his ears numb. He stood still and looked at Ignacio crying on the grass, then turned and threw the bloodied, unreadable stone back into the mosque. "There," he said. "I didn't steal it. I'm not a _thief_. Why didn't you just listen to me?" And he walked away from them both, back straight and head high; he was a soldier, he had defended his honor on the battlefield, that was all. Ignacio would be sorry tomorrow, and they could go eat grapes together and have a proper game of war in the fields...

He didn't see Ignacio again, and Roman's face was always wary when they were together, until he stopped talking to Vidal completely and ran around with other boys at school.

That was how Vidal learned that people broke, too.

* * *

  
It was unthinkable that the son of a general not become a soldier himself; Vidal had, indeed, never thought it. He didn't dream of his uniform, his command, the horse he should have and the orders he would give; he knew he would have them.

He was a _teniente_ first (he could hardly start off a simple soldier), assigned to a mountain brigade which spent more time in Madrid than in the mountains. His commanding officer made occasional sorties for appearance's sake, but nothing came of them until the day a party rode back with two soldiers missing and a brigand slung over the back of one of the horses.

Capitán Maura could not quite aspire to General Vidal's ruthless practicality, but he knew the worth of expediency and he had had the measure of Teniente Vidal since the young man's first salute. He found a quiet storeroom surrounded by other empty rooms, had the bandit placed under guard there, and told Vidal to question him until he stopped answering.

He also handed Vidal a hoof pick.

It was a very long night, and an educational one for both Vidal and the prisoner, although the prisoner didn't appear to appreciate his newfound knowledge as much as Vidal did. When Capitán Maura came back in the morning to see what Vidal had learned, he found his _teniente_ still flushed and bright-eyed from his work, while the prisoner was curled around his chains, whimpering and hiding his face.

When Vidal finished making his report, he asked, "Shall I send for the doctor?"

"No, no," said Maura, "it's hardly worth wasting his time... Just get rid of him, and get the men ready - we've got to attack before they know their man's broken and they move." Then he added carelessly, "Good work, Teniente," and left.

Vidal checked his pistol, loaded two shots, lifted it and placed them both in the prisoner's head. The prisoner shuddered, his limbs relaxed; his head rolled and hid the side of his face that the bullets had exploded through. Even through the hoof pick's marks he looked peaceful...

That was one way to fix things, Vidal thought, and at last one that he was good at.

* * *

  
The day he became Capitán Vidal he received a small brown package from his father, campaigning across the Mediterranean. He opened it in his quarters and found within a battered, stopped watch with a cracked face, and the workings sticky and clogged with blood when he opened it up. Even so the case had the weight of gold, and the gears an elegancy he had never seen in clockwork before; a watch much finer than any his father had ever dreamed of owning.

It was a fine gift for a promotion, and more. Vidal sent his officers to the town to find a watchmaker's kit and books, and every day before drills and after the day's work was done he studied, practising on Serrano's watch before touching his own: he cleaned each gear and spring with the greatest care, replaced the ones bent or missing a tooth, buffed and smoothed and polished the gold until it shone like brighter than the marks of his rank. The one thing he could not fix was its crystal face, too fine to be replaced with the glass that he could afford, and so the hands ticked away beneath the cracks. But he had fixed everything else, and become a captain; that was worth a thousand vases, a thousand antique clocks, a thousand homes splintered apart. He knew it.

The day he first set it according to the military broadcast was the day they announced the death of General Vidal in battle. "He fought valiantly with his troops," said the _general de brigada_ on the radio, "but he was outnumbered and fell to the enemy..."

Capitán Vidal listened to his watch tick in perfect time, and thought that it was time to start something new.

* * *

  
He took the greatest care he had ever taken in his life with Carmen. She might be a tailor's widow, but she was still a lady, and Vidal was a man used to the company of men; all he could find in himself was the polite respect he had offered to his mother. But it made her smile, somehow, and she called him charming; they were married by the company chaplain, and she was gentle with him on their wedding night, a greater kindness than he had hoped for.

He had never managed to meet her daughter, Ofelia, who was away at school. He was not entirely certain about a young girl getting so much education, but then, it did not seem to have hurt Carmen. And what did girls learn at school, anyway? He hardly knew; manners, math and reading, perhaps the piano... That would not be so bad, if she learned Carmen's grace and the piano, and could play at parties as his mother had once done to make a perfect and unbreakable music-box family.

Once his son was born...

* * *

  
It was impossible to give a decent dinner in the mountains, but he had done the best he could and it was going well enough, the more so for Ofelia's absence. Mercedes and her women were fine cooks, and the company better than he had expected, even if their wives encouraged Carmen in her romantic notions.

But then she left to see to her wayward daughter, and one of the men spoke up; he had known General Vidal in Africa, he said, had nothing but respect for the man. "And I'm sure you've heard the story, Capitán," he said, "that the General smashed his watch on a rock, so his son would know how and when his father died..."

Capitán Vidal was still only a moment, lifting his glass; then he took a drink, and said briefly, "Ridiculous. My father didn't own a watch."

* * *

  
He watched his face in the mirror, lathered in shaving-cream and ready for the razor. The watch ticked under the beat of the music, soft, steady, breaking the rhythm, and he tilted the mirror and turned the razor's blade to place it just so against the reflected throat and -

The scratch on the mirror looked like the cracks in the watch-face, something never meant to be repaired.

* * *

  
Vidal staggered out of the labyrinth with his son in his arms, the world a blur of fire and spider-webbed darkness, but the rebels stood clear from the shadows at last. His cheek wept blood through the cotton and the wounds in his chest stung with sweat; he pulled himself together, one last time, to stand straight as a soldier.

There was no mercy in Mercedes's eyes, but he hadn't expected any. He held his son out and she took him without a word, and stepped back into the ranks.

He took the watch out of his pocket and held it; savored once more the weight of the gold, felt one more time the cracks, sharp against his palm, eternal failure marked off in muted ticks.

He said, "Tell my son how his father died. Tell him -"

"No," said Mercedes the merciless. "He will not even know your name."

He opened his mouth - _No, I was going to fix it, I_ \- and the shot hit his cheek and blood filled his sight and he fell, curling into himself.

* * *

  
When the rebels finally left the labyrinth so did the faun, stretching creaky legs in the last of the moonlight before dawn. He saw the faint glint in the dead hand and bent, rising up again with the watch in one knobby hand. "Ah ah ah," he crooned to himself and the night wind, "what a funny little thing they've left behind for a poor faun... Not the usual toll, but it will do, it will do."

He stepped back, and roots rising from his hoofprints crept towards the huddled body.

"A bull should know better than to enter a labyrinth," said the faun, and cackling he faded into the earth.


End file.
